


Awakening

by lbk_princen



Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: Character Study, Origin Story
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-19
Updated: 2019-05-19
Packaged: 2020-03-07 18:41:26
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 811
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18878992
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lbk_princen/pseuds/lbk_princen
Summary: He wakes in the dirt with blood in his mouth. He doesn't know who or where or what he is.





	Awakening

**Author's Note:**

> I've been toying with the idea of writing a fic about Molly waking up for the first time, did nothing about it for weeks, then wrote this in a fever state at 1am. If it feels disjointed and confusing: good, that's what I was going for.

Pressure from all sides, cold weight surrounding him, trapping him. Blood in the mouth. He is like an animal, driven by blind instinct to  _ escape. _ Struggling. Moving, twisting, wrenching, panicking. No air, lungs burning.

A hand works upwards, bursts free, feels air. Clawing, digging, blood in the mouth. A head emerges, the dirt falling away. 

Gasping breaths. Blood in the mouth.

Lucidity comes and goes, and when it comes, it rarely stays. He knows he is alive, but that is all he knows. Time goes by unnoticed, unmeasured.

Something grasps him, another creature, and he doesn’t have the energy to strike out. He is alive, but barely. He is alive, but he is not there. He is empty empty empty empty empty empty empty empty empty empty empty empty empty empty empty--

Warmth. Light pressure from toes to neck; less oppressive, more protective. No blood in the mouth. Eyes open to colours. Vision is fuzzy, head feels light and heavy all at once. A voice from the side. Words are incomprehensible. Eyes close. Too much still, too much for this body, for a mind so empty empty empty…

Things fuzz and blur and focus very suddenly. Sitting up, being held. Hot soup in the mouth. Swallowing, pulling away. Blinking, focusing, observing. Learning. A person sits beside him, holding him up, feeding him. Speaking to him. The words go ignored. Hands lay in the lap, lavender-skinned. He moves one, balling it into a fist.  _ His _ hand.  _ His _ lap. 

The person tries to speak to him again, to feed him again, but their words are garbage to his brain. Noise, just noise. He pushes them weakly when they try to feed him more. He tries to get up, they push him down. Head spinning, spinning, eyes closing…

He learns their faces first, before understanding their voices. The man with the pointed ears and long brown hair. The man with no hair at all and scars across his face. The little girl with the voice that makes him heavy and fuzzy-tired. They feed him, they wash him, and in his moments of clarity they watch him as he learns himself.

Lavender skin broken up by static eyes, red and glistening. They don’t respond when he touches them. Raised scars that he can feel criss-crossing arms and torso. Toes that wiggle and take his weight when he stands, wobbling all the while. A tail, long and spade-tipped that helps him right himself when he loses balance. He touches the face and knows that it’s there. He touches the horns and feels their ridges, feels the curl to their shape. He touches hair that is soft and close to the skull. 

They watch him learn himself and the bald man brings him a dirty plane of glass, and when he looks at it he sees yet another person. Another stranger, this one with the same lavender skin he sees on his hands. He realizes that the face he sees in the glass and the face he can reach up and touch is the same thing. There is no familiarity, but this realization keeps him occupied for a long time. This is him. He has no idea who this is.

He learns the words they say, learns their names. Gustav lets him dress himself alone and smiles proudly when he does it without issue. He leaves the tent for the first time, and is surrounded by smells and sights and sound. He learns them all.

“You’ve come a long way,” Gustav says, sitting at the foot of his cot. “We’ve been calling you M.T, is that your name?”

Now lucid all the time, still learning, he shrugs. 

“Still not speaking, hm?” Gustav asks.

He works his throat silently. Makes a faint sound. Gives up and just hums, turning his hands palms-up.

Gustav sighs. “And you don’t remember anything yet?”

He shakes his head.

“And you don’t know your name at all?”

He shakes his head.

Days pass, and he knows the days now, understands how the sun is used to measure them. He helps the carnival how he can, taking down tents and feeding horses and saying his first words, calls his family by their names.

“I’ve been thinking,” Gustav says over dinner. “It’s about damn time we call you something other than M.T, yeah?”

He raises his head. “Sure,” he says. “What were you thinking of?”

Gustav smiles. “How about: Mollymauk Tealeaf?”

He tilts his head, considering it. His tail swishes and his fingers drum on the table. He savors the sensory input, because it’s easier to understand than the pulsing haze in the back of his head, the place where information slips through every now and then like a hot brand, in a way he doesn’t like. 

The name means nothing to him. “It’s perfect,” he says, showing his fangs in a smile.


End file.
